NEW YORK—For only the eighth time in 46 games, and the first time since Nov. 26, the Pittsburgh Penguins had their top two defense pairings together on Thursday night. Kris Letang’s return to the lineup showed just how tough Pittsburgh is when it is solid at the back.

Letang, who suffered a concussion on a hit from Max Pacioretty in Montreal on Thanksgiving weekend, looked nothing like a player who had missed 21 consecutive games. In 24:17 on the ice, the most of any Penguins skater in their 4-1 win over the New York Rangers, the 24-year-old had an assist, three hits, two blocked shots and a plus-2 rating. Those efforts made Letang the game’s No. 3 star.

The No. 1 star was the sublime Evgeni Malkin, who scored a pair of goals, while No. 2 was goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, who made 30 saves. Letang provided a helping hand to both along the way.

In the first period, New York’s All-Star defenseman Dan Girardi rifled a shot toward the Penguins’ net that made both Letang and Fleury jump off the ice. Fleury got credit for a save on the play, but the shot actually went off the shaft of Letang’s stick. Then, in the third, Letang set up Malkin to make a deft stickhandle on his way to a backhand goal past Henrik Lundqvist that made it 3-1.

“It’s fun to see him going like this,” Letang said of Malkin, who has scored seven goals in the last four games and leads the NHL with 54 points. “He’s been playing great. I had a chance to see him from up top (watching in the press conference while injured), but playing next to him is pretty cool.”

The Penguins could say the same about having Letang back on the ice alongside Brooks Orpik on their top defense pair. On the eight occasions when Letang, Orpik, Paul Martin and Zbynek Michalek have all been healthy enough to play this season, Pittsburgh is 7-0-1.

“It’s good to have your top four defensemen back on the ice, that’s for sure,” Penguins coach Dan Bylsma said. “We certainly missed his presence back there, in a lot of ways—defending, ability to play with the puck, power play-wise. To be able to get those four guys—who we haven’t had really together a significant amount this year—to have them together, will be a lift for our team. It’s also getting a good player back on the ice as well.”

Thursday gave the Penguins as many games with their top two pairs intact as games with their captain, Sidney Crosby, who missed his 18th straight game with his latest concussion. Pittsburgh went 5-2-1 during the eight-game stretch when its captain was in the lineup in November and December. As much as the NHL might miss Crosby, the Penguins do still have Malkin, an MVP candidate whom Bylsma said before the game is playing as well as he has ever seen the Russian play. Having Letang back could very well be a bigger boost to the Penguins than getting Crosby back, insane as that may sound.

“It means a lot,” defenseman Ben Lovejoy, who surrendered his lineup spot for Letang’s return, told Sporting News. “He’s arguably our best player. He controls out there for 25-26-27 minutes a night, he controls the play and he makes everybody on the team so much better.”

That was evident in the job that Letang and Orpik did against what was New York’s best line on Thursday night—Carl Hagelin, Derek Stepan and Marian Gaborik. That line showed what it was capable of with the Rangers’ only goal on the game, a five-hole shot by the rookie Hagelin off a superb backhand saucer pass from Gaborik, but it came as Matt Niskanen had just come on the ice for Michalek, while Martin could not get to the bench at the end of a long shift.

The Gaborik line combined for half of the Rangers’ 30 shots on goal, and while the bulk of them came with Letang on the ice for the Penguins, it was indicative of the strength of his return that Bylsma kept sending him over the boards, even after talking in the morning about wanting to keep Letang’s minutes down.

“It was a good game, a good test to see if I’m in shape, and I felt pretty good out there,” Letang said. “Some plays, I need to get back into it, but overall it felt pretty good.”

It felt all the better for the Penguins, whole again at the back and on a four-game winning streak after losing six straight to ever-so-briefly fall out of playoff position. Pittsburgh is back up to sixth, and primed to continue to rise with its best defenseman back in the mix.